Lieutenant Logan Echolls
by BeWitchingRedhead36
Summary: Ever wondered what made Logan join the Navy? Well, Veronica decides during a romantic dinner that she needs more of a motive from Logan as to why he joined the armed forces. Angsty-fluff. One-shot set post-movie, post-book. This is my take on why Logan would join the Navy. Rated T for a little bit of swearing and references to their sordid pasts. Enjoy!


**_A/N: I thought we needed a bit of a explanation for WHY Logan joined the Navy. I'm not the only one of my readers to want this. I played around with motive in my chapter of "Weekend to Remember," and though this is a one-shot totally unrelated to that story, I expanded on some themes I planted in there. lateVMlover asked me to write a story on that motive, and this is what I came up with. Being more of a MaDi writer, I'd love to know how I did with a LoVe piece, especially one where they weren't supporting players to Mac and Dick. Please review (concrit always appreciated)!_****_ Thank you for reading. This is post movie, post book, Logan finally came back to Veronica after his latest tour of duty. Thank you to my wonderful beta-Cainc3! Enjoy..._**

**_Obligatory Disclaimer-Nope, don't own a thing, it's all Rob Thomas and gang!  
_**

**_Lieutenant Logan Echolls_**

"What made you do it?" Veronica asked suddenly. She looked up at Logan, who was cutting, or to use the proper terminology, julienning carrots at the big, center island in the kitchen of the beach house he shared with Dick Casablancas. Idly, she ran her pinkie around the rim of her glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

Stealing a page from her playbook, Logan gave a Veronica-patented head tilt, confused by her non sequitur. They'd been talking about her latest case while he finished chopping the vegetables for the bœuf bourguignon he was making for their romantic dinner. He'd been back home for exactly two weeks from his one-hundred eighty day tour. "You'd think I'd have defaulted back into expecting your left-field questions, but evidently I haven't. Okay, I'll bite, what made me do what?"

"That," Veronica said, pointing to Logan's Navy uniform.

"I look damn good in the uniform. Plus, remember you told me I need to wear this all the time." Logan took a fortifying sip of wine. He knew that wasn't what she was asking. "Maybe we can do a little role playing, you know, after I woo you with my fancy French cooking." He slammed the glass back down on the quartz countertop a little harder than he meant to.

"Role playing?" Veronica asked, in a faux confused tone.

"Yes, role playing, I'll play the role of Richard Gere, without the Gerbil of course, while you play Debra Winger's part. I know the gentleman aspect may be a stretch, but I've got the Officer part on lockdown."

"I'm not ruling that particular activity out," Veronica said, "however that's not really what I'm talking about. Why did you join the Navy to begin with, you know, during our nine years of radio silence? I want the real reason, please, not some Facebook blurb about serving God and country." She reached over and grabbed a stuffed mushroom from the serving platter in front of her.

"Does it matter?"

"Yes," Veronica said finally after she'd finished chewing then swallowing the mushroom appetizer. "It matters, to me."

"You were busy getting on with your life," Logan put years of residual bitterness into those eight tiny words.

He thought back to those dark days when Veronica up and left Neptune after their freshman year at Hearst College, no good-byes, no **_Dear __Logan_ **notes, nothing, nada, zip. It was _dead air_ radio silence. Technically she didn't owe him anything, they'd imploded long before that, but running away—Veronica's forte—effectively murdered all hope he'd had of making it up to her. They were on one of their trademarked "off again" periods when he'd made the drunken fatal error of having sex with Madison Sinclair—public enemy number one—during freshman year. The unforgiveable part in her eyes was the _who_, not the _what_.

He was pulled brutally into the present however when he felt a sudden pinprick of sharp pain. Looking down he saw a trail of blood seeping onto his pile of carrot sticks on the cutting board. "Shit!" he exclaimed holding up his index finger, trying to gauge the length and depth of the gash. Then he stuck the injured finger into his mouth, vampiring away the blood.

"You okay?" Veronica looked up at his expletive.

"It's only a flesh wound," Logan tried to joke, doing his best to channel Monty Python. His British accent fell flat.

She jumped up from her perching spot at the table and rushed over to Logan. Gently she pulled his injured finger from his mouth to examine it, and then guided him over to the sink stationed behind them. Turning on the faucet, Veronica placed his finger in the cool running water. It rained red.

"Well, you won't need stitches," Veronica remarked, she sounded relieved.

Logan looked down and saw it was only a glorified scratch really, one that hurt like hell though. He made a mental note to not use sharp implements next time he thought back to his storied romantic history with Veronica. That was evidently not a good combo; he chalked it up to a good life lesson. He was collecting a lot of those lately it seemed. "Aw, big tough guy like myself, stitches wouldn't keep me down."

Veronica made a show of looking around. "I don't see any big, tough guys around here. Just you! Good thing you didn't get blood on your uniform." She walked back to the table and grabbed her tan and black _Coach _clutch she'd casually hung on the back of her chair, and rifled through. She dug up a bandage from the depths of her too-small bag and held it up like a prize.

"What a Girl Scout," he snarked as Veronica came back around to where Logan was still rinsing off the blood from his war wound. She made quick work of turning the water off and then patting his finger dry with a paper towel from the nearby rack. Next he watched her tenderly put the sterile bandage on his finger. It soaked the pad.

"You know, there are other less painful ways to avoid a conversation," she said as she cleaned up the blood trail on the Island. She looked back at Logan, who was just standing there. He averted his gaze.

"We're both kind of avoiders, if you think about it," he said finally. He dragged his eyes up, but Veronica had turned back around to collect the now red carrot shreds.

"I try not to," she admitted, still focusing on cleaning up what looked like a crime scene for such a tiny nick.

"What?"

"I try not to think about how we both excel at the art of running." She walked over to the garbage can at the end of the island. The sensor caused the lid to lift automatically and she threw away the blood sauced veggies.

"Is that what you think I did by joining the Navy, ran away?" Logan was incredulous. It wasn't running away, it was finding something. _Himself. _

She didn't respond right away, and when she did Logan again wasn't surprised by the change in topic.

"Well, you want to order a pizza?"

Logan sighed. "I could finish cooking."

"No, I wouldn't want you to follow up that performance by cutting off your finger. Let's just order something. Pizza?" she tried again.

"I promised you bœuf bourguignon. _L'Eau Bleu_ at the marina delivers to residents, I'll just call them."

"Okay," Veronica agreed. Her stomach growled and Logan smirked.

While waiting the promised forty-five minutes for their entrees to arrive, they drank their wine and snacked on the appetizer assortment Logan had laid out.

"So where's your shadow tonight?"

"Hot date, evidently, Dick said not to wait up." Logan said, and then chuckled at the scowl Veronica shot him.

"So he's splurging for the overnight rate these days," she retorted dryly. "Guess the trust fund checks are arriving on schedule."

"I didn't get the feeling it was _that _kind of date." His accompanying leer and raised eyebrow gave tell to what kind of date he meant. Seeing that her glass was almost empty, Logan leaned over to grab the half-full bottle of wine. He poured a healthy amount in her glass, and then topped off his.

"Must be a tourist then, I don't think anyone who has talked with your roomie for longer than five minutes would willingly commit a whole evening to his company, without a handsome hourly rate that is."

"Another thing that hasn't changed all these years later, your dislike for Dick."

"Old habits," Veronica shorthanded, waving her left hand.

"Actually he muttered something about bumping into someone he knew a long time ago but was never really friends with, then said he had a date and not to wait up. He did the typical Dick grabbing his dick pantomime, and left me gasping for air in a trail of _Drakkar Noir_ cologne. He only breaks that out for the special ones. You're the detective though, how would you piece those clues together?"

Veronica thought for a minute, then her eyes got wide and she took a big swallow of her wine. "Mac only stayed at the office an hour after closing time, which is leaving early for her. She muttered something about having plans for the night. I teased her about a hot date and she blushed. You don't think…" Her voice trailed off, she couldn't complete that thought.

"No way," they both said simultaneously. However, before they could further explore that theory, they were interrupted by the peal of the doorbell.

Logan got up and ran to the front door. He collected and signed for the containers of hot food, which would be placed on his tab at the club. He pressed a twenty dollar bill into the gangly kid's palm, thanked him and then shut the door.

Veronica had a fresh bottle of wine opened and waiting for them at the table, and she had dimmed the lights. The candles she had lit flickered. Logan plated up their meals and they spent ten minutes or so focused on the gourmet meal, and making quick work of the second bottle of wine. Conversation was sparse, and liberally sprinkled with sighs of appreciation.

Logan watched Veronica for a moment, as he contemplatively chewed. She had a smile on her face, the candle light making shadows on her face, her beautiful blond hair, as long as it always was, shimmered in the glow. She was beautiful, she was perfection. "You've spoiled me for other women. You know that, right?"

"All those legions of women throwing themselves mercilessly at your Greek God, Navy uniformed physique, and you pined for me the entire time, huh?"

"Pining? I don't recall doing any pining."

"Oh there was pining," she returned confidently.

"Maybe a little bit," Logan admitted with a smirk.

"You never did tell me why you joined the Navy in the first place; your sordid tale was interrupted by you cutting off a finger."

"You mean my scratch," Logan corrected. He waited a beat, and then softly said, "I never really put it into words before."

Veronica opened her mouth to say something more, and he thought for a moment she was going to let him off the hook, but she didn't end up verbalizing whatever it was she was about to say; nope, no reprieve there. She looked at him expectantly, but didn't try to say anything else like she was afraid that if she did he'd end up clamming back up on the subject. She was probably right, he admitted to himself. She knew him too well. "I like to fly."

"Wow, four whole words," Veronica said, underwhelmed.

"Four words packed with subtext."

"No. Not really."

"Okay, then, try this. Aaron."

That one word explanation summed it up more truly and honestly than anything else ever could. He never thought of that man as anything else but Aaron. He never called him dad, that honor was earned. Aaron might have been his biological father, but never a dad. Veronica never let him off the hook; she forced him to face down ugly truths.

Veronica reached across the table and grabbed his hand. Logan looked down at her tiny hand, and then back up at her face. She was staring at him intently, again not daring to say anything.

"Flying was always a fascinating concept to me, being high up in the sky, leaving the problems here on Earth, well, on the ground. I used to imagine flying off and away from Aaron, it's a place my mind could travel to—literally—as the belt made one with my back. I think you're the first person I have ever said this to, really. It wasn't so much that I thought I'd do this for a living, not certain I even knew it was an option, it was this romanticized concept for me since like middle school really."

"So flying represented an escape from Aaron?"

"At first maybe, then it became a secret dream I guess, along with kissing a certain blonde pep squad girl in pig tails that smelled like marshmallows and promises."

"_Promises_? That was the perfume I wore in high school," Veronica said, biting her lip. She tried to sound coy.

"What a coincidence," he teased back. "It was a thought in the back of my head, I never really thought I'd do anything with it, but then…" Logan's voice trailed off. "Then the sticky summer after I graduated from Hearst I was out running errands one day. I think Dick was having a party or something that night. I was beer bitch, his title for me. Next to _Neptune Liquors_ was the Armed Forces Recruitment Center."

"There's irony for you," Veronica couldn't resist noting.

"Neptune's unofficial town nickname should be _Ironyville_," he acquiesced.

"Did you accidentally go into the recruitment center? Maybe get the two doors mixed up?"

"No, I can actually read, and sadly I was stone cold sober, at that point. Anyway, I just planned on picking up a brochure, that's it, nothing more. I had scenes from _Top Gun_ running through my head, the theme song on repeat."

"There's a great life plan for you, choosing a career off of an 80's movie."

"Two of them," Logan corrected with his trademarked smirk, "don't forget _Officer and a Gentleman_, too."

Veronica reached across the table and flicked his arm with a manicured nail. The wine in the glass he was holding sloshed a little but nothing spilled out.

"The recruiter, Sergeant Chavez, sat me down and we talked. It was just going to be a fifteen minute casual Q&A thing, real informal, no pressure. Well, fifteen minutes turned into thirty, then forty-five, and next thing I knew it was going on an hour and a half and I was agreeing to come in the following week to take the ASVAB Navy Entry test."

"He must have been a hell of a smooth talker, a fly salesman."

"No, that's just it, he wasn't any of those things,. We could have been at a bar throwing back a couple, or ten, beers. What really cinched it for me was that I recognized his eyes."

Veronica was quiet for a brief moment, he could just make out the narrowing of her eyes through the dimly flickering candle light—it was her contemplation look. "His eyes?" she asked, searching for clarification.

"I recognized the haunted quality in them, he was someone with his own kicked puppy baggage, it's like a fucking club, and you always know other members instinctively."

"Yes, I'm a member of a couple clubs like that," Veronica returned dryly.

"I know," Logan affirmed.

"Is he a Neptune survivor too?"

"No, Sergeant Chavez was from outside San Diego, but his dad use to beat him too, always hidden away where no one would suspect the respected hospital administrator mistreated his eldest son. We traded stories, good times. Whereas pears make me vomit, he can't get within five feet of brussel sprouts."

"The club."

"The club," Logan agreed. "He credits the Navy with saving his life, with giving him a family. I'm not going to lie, not to you, never to you; I wasn't going down a very good path."

Veronica gave him a look that clearly broadcast _no shit_.

"I'm not really overflowing with family either, Charlie and I exchanged Christmas cards last year for the first time ever and Trina is living in London now, doing theater or Improv or something like that. Dick is pretty much my only family, and don't give me crap about him not being blood."

"I would never do that, I know you guys are more like family than anyone else in your respective bloodlines."

Logan gave her a grateful smile. "You just _get_ me."

"Ditto babe, ditto!"

Talk faded for a few minutes. Logan busied himself playing bartender, topping of Veronica's glass of wine then went over to the big fridge and grabbed a can of Coke for himself. He didn't drink much these days, and had become a bit of a lightweight. He sat back down across from Veronica and opened his drink. At her questioning glance he just shrugged and took a big sip of the soda, letting the bubbles coat his throat.

"I estimate that I've done forty-three thousand pushups in my lifetime by now," he said, steering the conversation back to the military. "Give or take."

"That's a lot of pushups."

"This may come as a surprise to you, but smart mouths and drill sergeants aren't a good combination. Sarcasm isn't a trait embraced at boot camp."

"So how did you come to that logical conclusion?"

"Uncle Sam's minions have a whole bunch of teaching methods at their disposal."

"Like?"

"I still have nightmares about the front-lean and rest."

"I don't know what that is."

"You don't want to know what a front-lean and rest is," Logan corrected. "It's the position of a pushup but you just hold it until your arms give out and you fall down face first on the hard ground." He scowled, remembering his first experience—first of many it turned out—with that instrument of torture.

"At first I was the only one who was punished for my mouth," Logan continued his stroll back in time to his boot camp memories. "Then Drill Sergeant Mann, sadistic asshat that he was, came up with the brilliant idea of turning my barrack mates against me."

"How did Sergeant asshat accomplish that goal?"

"A soap party."

"Group showers?" Veronica couldn't help asking, her tone incredulous. A shudder ran through her, perhaps a little exaggerated.

"Nope. Believe it or not that probably would have been more fun. A soap party—technical term—is when your bunk mates all put their bar of standard issue military soap in a sock and work together to pummel you senseless. Those suckers hurt!"

"Aw, but it fosters team work," Veronica said, a little snarky sounding to Logan.

"That's the idea behind a lot of group activities in boot camp, group think. My Sociology prof at Hearst would have had a blast watching me struggle through that place." Logan remembered the prisoner/guard experiment he and Wallace did their first weekend at college for their Intro to Soc class. It was enlightening to say the least. "Pretty sure I would have gotten an F; I don't always play nice with others, at least according to Mrs. Davis, my Kindergarten teacher."

"Were you Guest of Honor at any more soap parties?"

"No, all it really takes is one soap party and you fall into line pretty well."

"I can imagine."

"No, you really can't, and I hope you never can."

"I had heard through the rumor mill that you had joined the Navy, but I could never figure out the why."

"You never quit being a PI, did you? You might have gone to law school but you could never fully exorcise that part of yourself, could you? You're always looking for motive."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Not anymore," Logan said softly.

"You're just saying that because I got you off a murder charge."

Logan couldn't help the chuckle that slipped out. "Maybe," he admitted. Then he added "I'm not kidding Veronica, I needed a wakeup call and the Navy has done an admirable job on that front. You and I could only work when I found myself and maybe you lost yourself. I don't see myself quitting the Navy anytime soon, and I won't ask you to quit the PI game."

"Okay," Veronica said, thoughtfully, "I see that, I guess. I only ask one thing, you don't play hero and die on me. I love you. The United States Navy needs you around; I need you around, too. Come back to me, please."

"Always, bobcat, I will always come back to you, always in all ways. I need that same promise from you."

Veronica pushed her wine away, got up and sat on Logan's lap. "You got it," she whispered breathlessly in his ear, sealing the promise with a kiss.

**_-The End._**

**_***Since you made it to the end, I was thinking maybe you could give me a quick review, you know, while you're in the neighborhood? Thanks for reading!_**


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